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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.barrons.com/articles/top-1200-financial-advisors-america-51552077917\nTop 1200 Financial Advisors\nSteve Garmhausen\nMarch 8, 2019 8:00 pm ET\nIllustration by Armando Veve\n“Humans are not built to see their life savings updated on a minute-by-minute basis,” says Clarke Lemons, president of WaterOak Advisors, in Winter Park, Fla. “This access to information challenges investor behavior.” It’s also challenging the financial advisors on our annual list of the nation’s Top 1,200, including Lemons.\nInformation overload, facilitated by smartphones and computers, can trigger impulsive, news-driven, buy-and-sell decisions, Lemons warns. And that can upset carefully laid long-term investing plans. It’s the job of a good advisor to have investors think in years, not minutes, and decades, not days.\nLemons, who ranks No. 6 in Florida in this year’s Top 1,200 financial advisors, is part of a chorus working to focus investors on long-term goals, while making the cool, rational investment decisions that can help turn those goals into reality.\nThe ability to help investors keep a cool head is increasingly important, now that the easy monetary policy and fiscal stimulus that muted volatility throughout the second-longest bull market in history are no longer sure things. “Investors have had a very solid run with equities, courtesy of both fiscal and monetary policy over the past 10 years,” says Merrill Lynch advisor Edythe DeMarco, in Providence, R.I., who is ranked second in her state. “That will moderate.”\nAdvisor Profiles: 10 Standout Financial Advisors From Barron’s Annual Ranking\nAdvisor Rankings: Top 1200 Advisors Table\nOur annual Top 1,200 ranking recognizes outstanding advisors from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. It’s our largest, most comprehensive listing, and it encompasses everyone from independents, who own and operate their own practices, to employees of the big Wall Street firms.\nThis special report names the top advisors in each state, with the number of ranking spots distributed in proportion to state population and wealth. Many of the ranked advisors work in or around locales of great wealth—Silicon Valley, New York City, South Florida, to name a few. However, the breadth of this ranking ensures that standouts in less populous and less wealthy areas receive the accolades they deserve.\nOur rankings are based on assets under management, revenue generated by advisors for their firms, and the quality of their practices. Investment performance isn’t an explicit criterion, because it is often a function of each client’s appetite for risk. In our evaluations, we examine regulatory records, internal company documents, and 100-plus data points provided by the advisors themselves.\nConsistently Tops\nCurrent Top 1,200 advisors who have ranked No. 1 in their states for three years or more.\nn Active as C-suite executive. n Current No. 1 advisor in their state.\nThis year’s ranking features many new names. More than 15% of the 2019 Top 1,200—88 advisors—weren’t in last year’s listing. Among those who were ranked last year, several made significant jumps, including Ken Witover of UBS, who moved up 75 spots in New York; Alan Yonack of Morgan Stanley, who rose 38 positions in Texas; Lisa Reed of Neuberger Berman, up 18 in California; and Jennifer Marcontell of Edward Jones, up 17 in Texas. In addition, precisely a third of the states (plus D.C.) feature a new No. 1 this year (see tables).\nThe Top 1,200 on average have larger teams, more experience, more clients and more assets to manage than they did five years ago.\nThe movement in the rankings reflects several factors, but perhaps the most significant is this: Top advisors are getting older. Their average age is now 56, up from 53 in the 2014 listing. That might appear a minor development, but it’s significant because the best advisors start anointing successors and moving clients to them well in advance of actually leaving a practice. As a result, the rankings are starting to reflect generational change.\nThis is occurring against the backdrop of historically high market volatility, which has left many investors uneasy, says Michael Yoshikami, the CEO of Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Destination Wealth Management. Yoshikami, who’s No. 9 in Barron’s annual ranking of independent advisors, says that trade frictions, the direction of interest rates, and political developments have created market drama, and “we don’t think this is going to go away anytime soon.”\nThat matters in part because it can rattle investors who mistakenly thought they had a high tolerance for risk, causing them to, for instance, lock in losses via panic selling. “Too many investors invest on the assumption that volatility is not going to impact them,” says Yoshikami, “but in a lot of cases, it really does.”\nThe stakes are highest for retirees who can no longer just sock away more income to compensate for investment losses. Seventy percent of Yoshikami’s clients are retired.\nTo help clients avoid unwelcome surprises, Yoshikami focuses on dividend-paying stocks; cash flow from them can cushion the impact of market downswings. He’s also purchasing lower-duration bonds. “Whenever we buy an asset, we’re not just focused on whether it can go up,” he says. “We also look at volatility, and we do scenario testing. It’s a process we think is very important.”\nDeMarco believes that quality stocks “are going to be more important in this next cycle.” These generally have a strong balance of assets to liabilities, consistent profitability through economic cycles, and dividends that historically have held steady or risen.“Tried and true,” DeMarco calls these stocks. She echoes Yoshikami’s concerns about the risk to investors who are drawing down savings and can’t afford mistakes. “We have to get them through this very important market cycle,” she observes.\nIn addition to quality stocks, DeMarco and her team like private equity, which can potentially deliver larger returns because it’s in a less-efficient market, and private commercial real estate, which throws off tax-advantaged income. Both types of assets have a low correlation to stocks, and that can help smooth out portfolio performance.\nIf, as many believe, U.S. stocks will have less pop going forward, it could\nTop Advisor By State\npay to look overseas, says Brenton Point Wealth Advisors, in New York. EAFE (Europe, Australasia, and the Far East) shares have underperformed for 11 years, and are trading at a 21% discount to U.S. equities. The weakening U.S. dollar could catalyze outperformance by foreign stocks, the firm says.\nMeanwhile, Lemons sees a number of risks facing investors. One is a preoccupation with large-cap growth stocks to the exclusion of other assets—something that echoes the dot-com build-up 20 years ago. “Investors need to understand that the recent performance of large-cap growth stocks, and growth stocks in general, over value stocks, is at historic levels,” he says.\nAnother unhealthy obsession, Lemons argues, is with index funds. They offer an inexpensive way to gain broad market exposure, but investors who prioritize product type over risk management may regret it, he warns.\nPerhaps the one challenge that all good advisors can relate to is clients who change their behavior based on short-term volatility. Late last year, many ostensibly long-term investors became short-term investors as market turbulence picked up, Lemons says.“As we have seen in recent weeks, if one reacted to the volatility and sold a portion or all of one’s portfolio, the result has been nothing short of tragic,” he adds. “Short-term thinking hurts long-term results.”\n“Humans are not built to see their life savings updated on a minute-by-minute basis,” says Clarke Lemons, president of WaterOak Advisors, in Winter Park, Fla."